Many prior art vehicle automatic variable transmissions have been developed in recent years for various purposes. Most of these variable transmissions using conical-shaped gears have been using frictional non-slip contact between a plurality of gears on their surfaces.
One of the disadvantages associated with these prior art variable transmission using frictional non-slip contact between the gears is the inefficient operation and loss power as a result of the frictional contact.
It is therefore a primary object of the present invention to provide a variable transmission using at least one frusto-conical gear and a plurality of sliding face gears in combination with the frusto-conical gear to provide an infinite number of step-up and step-down gear configurations in combination with a conventional vehicle automatic transmission.
In my earlier application, I disclosed a variable speed transmission that includes at least one frusto-conical gear having a hollow space therewithin for housing a plurality of sliding face gears supported on a main power shaft. In this transmission the plurality of sliding face gears are hydraulically slidable to engage one another in a various step-up or step-down configurations to provide a smoother automatic shifting and driving condition.